Marketing,forward

Where marketing and communications are going next, and four specialties doing that work today. Five years in market as an agency. Now a group, and a point of view.

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Our view

01 / 05

Marketing is being rebuilt while it is still running.

Budgets are tighter, tools are smarter, attention is harder to earn, and the lines between brand, experience and technology have nearly gone.

For five years Forward Media worked as an agency. The questions changed before the industry did. Clients stopped asking us for a campaign and started asking how their marketing should work now. Forward is our answer: specialists who do the work, and a practice that thinks out loud about where it is going.

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The pressure behind the shifts.

7.7%

Average marketing budget as a share of company revenue.

59%

of CMOs say their budget is not enough to deliver their strategy.

39%

of CMOs plan to cut agency spend.

22%

say generative AI has already reduced their reliance on external agencies.

Source: Gartner, 2025 CMO Spend Survey. Global figures; our Gulf edition is in preparation.

Forward Thinking

What we are learning, shared.

Essays, research and conversations on where marketing and communications are going. Written by the people doing the work, for the people running it.

EssayFeatured

The marketing department, rebuilt.

What years of building and running marketing departments taught us, and what we would design differently with the tools available today.

Read the essay

ReportIn preparation

The State of Marketing, Gulf edition.

Our annual read on budgets, talent, tools and what marketing leaders in the region plan next.

Note4 min read

Why we split one agency into four specialties.

The broader marketing became, the more agencies tried to become everything. We chose the opposite.

EssayNew

AI changed the cost of making. Not the cost of being wrong.

Generative AI has made production almost free. The expensive part of marketing has moved, and most teams have not followed it.

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Four specialties put the thinking to work.

Each goes deep in its own discipline and answers its own shifts. Work with one, or bring them together when the problem needs it.

A stone sphere on a stone step against a powder-blue wall

EXCEED.

Think better.

The questions that come before the work, and the marketing departments that have to deliver it.

StrategyIntelligenceMarketing Excellence

Answers Output → Judgement · Campaigns → Systems · Reporting → Proof

Explore Exceed

Layered pale paper folded into soft waves

SARD.

Make something people care about.

Ideas and content made for the way people actually watch, scroll and share. The format comes after the idea.

CreativeContentSocial

Answers Reach → Attention

Explore Sard

A linen curtain drawn aside onto soft blue light

Give the idea somewhere to live.

Launches, rooms, stages and gatherings people can be part of, and all the production behind making it feel effortless.

ExperiencesEventsProduction

Answers Screens → Rooms · bkstage.me ↗

Visit bkstage.me

Pale stone blocks stacked into a modular structure

VRIO LABS.

Build the thing we wish existed.

It starts with a frustration: something too slow, too complicated, in the wrong place. If technology can fix it, we build.

MartechPlatformsProducts

Answers Output → Judgement · Campaigns → Systems · Reporting → Proof

Explore Vrio Labs

How they connect · Entering a new marketOr work with just one

EXCEEDReads the market and defines the opportunity

SARDTurns it into the launch idea and content

BACKSTAGEBrings it into the room on launch night

VRIO LABSBuilds the tool that shows what worked

Born here. Interested in everywhere.

Forward Media was built in the Middle East by people who have run marketing from the inside, not only advised on it. We know this market, and we stay curious about everything outside it: other categories, other markets, other disciplines. Forward should keep earning its name.

5^yrs

in market as Forward Media, with a team of around 25 people.

100⁺

clients across brands, institutions and businesses in the region.

20⁺

years of our founder's experience in Gulf marketing and communications.

specialties under one roof: strategy, creative, experiences and technology.

Our team has worked with